I agree almost entirely.
I'd just add the further development of the last PDLC is much needed also - Odyssey added some conceptually great gameplay (in my opinion, naturally) which has not been polished to become a truly integral part of this space game, perhaps future 'features' will complete it?
(as an aside, I used to enjoy CQC, but 95% of the time was in matches with the experts who were extremely competent, I got bored of spending more time at the 'rebuy' screen than actually playing!)
Yup.
I thought Odyssey was completely unnecessary, and i stick by that, but it's here, so no point lamenting that. Unsurprisingly the mechanics and features it introduced are grossly under-exploited. They're good, and have potential,
but they're under-exploited.
But that's also unsurprising considering that was already the case in the base game. There seemed to be an unreasonable level of expectation that somehow on-foot mechanics would provide remedies for the lack of exploitation of space- based activities.
Again unsurprisingly, that also wasn't the case. But the Thargoid War and the various things that have forked off from that have shown a bit of what can be done with the existing mechanics to deliver new activities. It's far from without fault, but definitely a step in the right direction. I only hope FD now understand what's really missing from the game.